Toss a Pitch

Entrepreneurs compete in city contest for new business ideas

Sam Taub wants to bring New York-style Jewish baked goods to Santa Fe with his company, Flour & Water. Eliza Lutz already has four artists signed to her recording label, Matron Records. Jessica Brommer’s startup company, Stalworth Shoes & Boots, aims to reintroduce the forgotten art of handmaking shoes.

Whether they'll get funding help from Santa Fe's latest entrepreneurial accelerator depends on how skilled they are at selling their ideas to others. MIX Santa Fe's 2016 bizMix contest took off on June 2 at Skylight, during the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce Business Awards. While daylight still penetrated the nightclub's canopy windows, chamber members, public servants and elected officials mingled with 12 teams of entrepreneurs who made the cut to pitch their ideas.

"I'm not terribly good at this self-promoting, marketing bit," says Brommer, who like other finalists navigated the crowd with a balloon tied around her arm, wearing a blue sticker inviting attendees to "Ask me about my business idea."

"The biggest challenge for me is to get out of the studio and go talk to people," she says. "It's pushing me to approach things in a different way."

Representatives of new companies as diverse as John Warmath's Bolt (a clean-energy-based version of Uber) and Jakub Svec's Perk (which has patented an affordable version of high-end coffee brewing machines) will also develop written business plans and receive mentorship from community leaders, all the while competing for $50,000 in cash and prizes.

Kate Noble, the city's special projects administrator for economic development and communications, helped start the annual bizMix program (now in its fifth year) as a joint initiative between the city and the chamber of commerce, spinning off from its monthly MIX networking meetings. Past winners include Planit Mapper, Santa Sidra, Paper Dosa and Canyon Vista Cooking. Noble calls bizMix a "distilled accelerator" because of its compressed schedule.

"If you can distill how you're going to make money, you win," Noble says.

As finalists are inundated with inquiries, they refine their presentations and tweak their pitches in response to feedback. Noble listened in as Jackie Camborde described her company, SuccessStyle. "She was really wordsmithing," Noble observes later, "whether she would 'edit' or 'curate'" women's wardrobes."

This year's winners will be announced at New Mexico Hard Cider, which won $500 as a bizMix finalist in 2013, after which it opened a taproom in the Luna Center. But don't look for effusive praise from company owner Craig Moya. Rather than crediting the accelerator program, he says the business' success is due to "mine and my wife's motivation to do something." If bizMix is an effort by the city to encourage new business growth, Moya doesn't see this borne out in their dealings with local companies. The taproom lies within Santa Fe's historic district, and he claims the regulatory oversight was burdensome.

"The city really is not business friendly," he says. "They held me up for two months opening [New Mexico Hard Cider], just because of the patio fencing."

Cheesemongers of Santa Fe owner John Gutierrez, who won $5,000 in the 2014 bizMix competition, has a more charitable view. "The mayor's office has been both responsive to issues we've had with the regulatory environment, as well as just supportive in general," Gutierrez says, "of entrepreneurs and new businesses and growth in Santa Fe."

Gutierrez, who opened a storefront downtown, says he appreciates government efforts to develop a progressive and sustainable business community while preserving Santa Fe's unique essence.

Out of the nine companies that have won the bizMix competition between 2012 and 2015, seven appear to still be in business. Haj Khalsa's Planit Mapper app no longer exists, but he says that's not the point. "It's not how much revenue is created, but how many times people were willing to go out there and start something new. That's what bizMix is doing. It's giving people a chance to throw something against the wall and see if it sticks." Khalsa also places great emphasis on the networking opportunities provided by the competition. "The most significant part of the process for me was the mentorship. … Some of the mentors I met at that time continue to be mentors for me."

Noble says that mentorship is "profoundly influential on the mentors, too. … I had one mentor say to me, 'This made me remember why I was passionate about my business in the first place.'" Many past finalists give back to the competition in one way or another. Khalsa himself serves as a mentor, from time to time. Melanie Boudar, one of the current finalists, calls the process a "valuable experience. We get paired with mentors who help us with our business plans. It's always good to have help to go over the financials and things that you're going to face and test the viability of your revenue streams. … It's a real thorough but concentrated business course."

Boudar's Cacao, the Art & Culture of Chocolate plans to serve gourmet chocolate (drawing on the regional flavors of New Mexico and Hawaii), offer workshops in making chocolate and provide a cozy atmosphere to indulge one's love of the delectable dessert. As chamber members entertained business proposals at the pitch contest, Boudar served up samples of her products.

Before the evening was through, attendees placed wooden nickels in popcorn buckets bearing the name of their favorite bizMix company. Maybe it was her professional presentation, or maybe it was the flavor of sea salt and vanilla bean still lingering on the voters' tongues, but whatever it was, it was enough to hand Boudar her first win. Pitch contests and mentor nights continue through the summer, with winners announced on Aug. 18. The next pitch contest is at 6 pm on July 21 at Yares Art Projects, with a final presentation planned for 5:30 pm on Aug. 11 at Thornburg Investment Management.

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